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Gothmog

(168,387 posts)
1. Imagine Bernie Sanders wins the White House. Then what?
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 09:36 PM
Mar 2016

Sanders' plans for adopting his proposals depend on these new voters. Here is how Sanders thinks that he will be able to force the GOP to be reasonable http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/21/1483791/-Imagine-Bernie-Sanders-wins-the-White-House-Then-what

Bernie Sanders has made some very big promises when it comes to his legislative priorities: He says he’ll make college free, pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and institute a generous single-payer national health insurance program. And when he’s asked how he’ll turn these promises into reality, he says that he and his supporters will help bring about a “political revolution.”

That’s a phrase Sanders uses often, but what does he mean by it? Sanders has said that if he wins the presidency, his victory will be accompanied by a “huge increase in voter turnout”—one that he thinks might end Republican control of Congress. But Sanders acknowledges that the House and Senate could, in spite of his best efforts, remain in GOP hands come next January.

Given that likelihood, Sanders offers an alternate means for achieving his political revolution. He says he knows that a Democratic president can’t simply “sit down and negotiate” with Republican leaders and forge a series of compromises. Anyone who's observed the GOP’s behavior over the course of Barack Obama’s presidency would not dispute that, and in any event, no compromise with Republicans would ever lead to single-payer anyway.

So what then? How would a President Sanders get Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to pass any of his big-ticket items? This is the model he proposes:

What we do is you put an issue before Congress, let’s just use free tuition at public colleges and universities, and that vote is going to take place on November 8 ... whatever it may be. We tell millions and millions of people, young people and their parents, there is going to be a vote ... half the people don’t know what’s going on ... but we tell them when the vote is, maybe we welcome a million young people to Washington, D.C. to say hello to their members of Congress. Maybe we have the telephones and the e-mails flying all over the place so that everybody in America will know how their representative is voting. [...]

And then Republicans are going to have to make a decision. Then they’re going to have to make a decision. You know, when thousands of young people in their district are saying, “You vote against this, you’re out of your job, because we know what’s going on.” So this gets back to what a political revolution is about, is bringing people in touch with the Congress, not having that huge wall. That’s how you bring about change.

The rest of the DK article debunks that concept that Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell could be influenced by these new voters but we never get to this issue and Sanders himself admits that he will not bet elected without this revolution. So far we are not seeing any evidence of this revolution. Again, Sanders's whole campaign is based on this revolution and so it is appropriate to ask where these new voters are?

It is hard for me to take Sanders' proposals seriously including the ones you want to talk about unless and until we see some evidence of this revolution.

Again, where are these millions and millions of new voters?

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